Independent Music Producers Career and Money Management: Music, Artistry and Money

Every freelancer puts enormous energy and talent into promoting his or her career-creative development, networking, keeping up with what others are doing, etc. But part of being successful involves knowing how to grow the assets that you already have, in the most efficient, risk appropriate way. Tom Rizzo, Principal and Chief Investment Officer of Plectrum Advisers LLC, will discuss the path to intelligent, evidence based investing.

Composer and Publisher Income in the Streaming Environment

Streaming presents both opportunities and challenges. As the income model changes, those members whose earnings are affected by the shift from traditional delivery to streaming need to know the facts, and the possible future consequences of this new model. The role of the AFM contracts, and the new direction of the business will be discussed by prominent composer, orchestrator and conductor Pete Anthony.

Protecting Your Estate

Many freelancers aren't knowledgeable about how to protect their hard won assets. There are several basic steps to take to ensure that your estate and your heirs are protected. Brittany Britton, Esq., will discuss common mistakes that can be avoided, and will offer strategies that can maximize the value of your estate for your heirs, including the benefits of trusts and wills.

Innovation in the Music Creator Space: Analysis suggests there are over 40M software based music creators today. We see a watershed opportunity in this space at this moment because of how technology has changed the way people create, causing an explosion in the number of people who make music and somewhat radical shift towards a more open and collaborative creative culture. Platforms like Splice have enabled this new generation of digital content creators with the ability to have whatever sound they hear in their head at their fingertips. In this roundtable, we’ll discuss how this innovation is empowering access to creativity and new revenue streams for composers. Hosted by Matt Block, John Kunkel, Israel Medina & Molly Moore

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Writing, producing and pitching tracks: Trends in composition and production and pitching tracks globally. Hosted by JC Dwyer

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Taking The Poser Out Of Composer. A writers roundtable; Why we write what we write; We’ll discuss our creative process, co-writing, bringing picture to life with emotion, keeping the bar high etc… Hosted by Scott Dente

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Music Production in South America. How we can exchange music services. Hosted by Enzo Massardo

Breaking the 4th Wall: A discussion about what the decision making process is really like behind the scenes working on Films and TV Shows. Hosted b\y Jody Friedman & Jennifer Lanchart

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From Brief to Picture: How a Placement Happens

We will be covering the different ways the various players communicate throughout the process. How exactly a piece of music gets placed in a show or commercial. Hosted by Danielle Mignogna & Eric Kaye

Table Three:

Ask an Industry Vet: The floor is yours to sit with two industry executives and ask them anything from how to pitch to libraries to perfecting your craft for placements. Hosted by Marc Ferrari & Jonathan Firstenberg

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How to achieve winning results in production music scoring, and understanding the mechanics of the genre. Employing innovation and entrepreneurship in the production music arena. Developing best practices and formulas for creative effectiveness, and identifying ways in which this style of creativity differs from scoring to picture and other compositional areas. Hosted by Art Phillips

Table Five:

Introduction to the Production Music Industry for songwriters and composers from recording industry backgrounds: differing methods of creativity and compensation. Hosted by Benoit Grey

Table Six:

How to Market Yourself and Standout to Production Music Libraries. Hosted by Dan Brown Jr

Table Seven:

Advice for Composers: Building A Career in Film, TV, Streaming and Production Music. Hosted by Alan Lazar

Hosted by Andrew Gross: Ask me anything. I wear many hats (composer (Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny, King of Queens), music supervisor (Netflix’s I Think You Should Leave), intl catalog distributor (Bulletproof Bear), copyright admin, PMA board member), so feel free to come by and ask me about any of the following:
• How to find a good rep/distribution partner
• How to negotiate good deals
• What styles of music sell
• What the PMA is doing for you
• Music supervision questions
• Revenue streams and how to collect them

A state of the Production Music industry in the Latin American market, especially when it comes to PRO processes in each country of this particular region. Also as a means to prospect towards distribution of our latin focused production music catalogue in European and North American markets. Hosted by Laurent Apffel

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Production music is the sonic lifeblood of so many audiovisual productions, from television programs to promotional campaigns to major theatrical releases. With its proliferation across the gamut of media productions and distribution channels, companies responsible for its contribution to the creative process are worthy of recognition.

The Production Music Association is proud to present the fifth annual Mark Awards, an awards ceremony dedicated to honoring excellence in the production music community. Named in honor of the late Andy Mark, who was a library owner and founding member of the PMA, the "Mark Awards" recognizes the very best in production music in 30 categories.

Join industry experts as they share world class production and mixing techniques in an insightful discussion about creativity, workflow, trade secrets and collaboration. Get a behind-the-scenes look at the essential roles of writing, producing and mixing impactful, marketable music. See how Composers, Producers and Mixers deliver some of the biggest hits in blockbuster movie Trailer Music.

Every freelancer puts enormous energy and talent into promoting his or her career-creative development, networking, keeping up with what others are doing, etc. But part of being successful involves knowing how to grow the assets that you already have, in the most efficient, risk appropriate way. Tom Rizzo, Principal and Chief Investment Officer of Plectrum Advisers LLC, will discuss the path to intelligent, evidence based investing.

Composer and Publisher Income in the Streaming Environment

Streaming presents both opportunities and challenges. As the income model changes, those members whose earnings are affected by the shift from traditional delivery to streaming need to know the facts, and the possible future consequences of this new model. The role of the AFM contracts, and the new direction of the business will be discussed by prominent composer, orchestrator and conductor Pete Anthony.

Protecting Your Estate

Many freelancers aren't knowledgeable about how to protect their hard won assets. There are several basic steps to take to ensure that your estate and your heirs are protected. Brittany Britton, Esq., will discuss common mistakes that can be avoided, and will offer strategies that can maximize the value of your estate for your heirs, including the benefits of trusts and wills.

SPONSORED BY:

In most cases, production music is used to sync with visuals on film, TV or the web. But it’s written in a very different way from traditional film and TV music written by a composer with a specific picture in front of them while they’re composing, along with direct input and collaboration from the visual content creators. How do production music composers write music for visuals with a blank visual canvas, knowing little about the visual content or its creators that may be using their music in the future, sometimes decades afterwards? This panel will discuss the intricacies of the unique creative process involved in creating production music, with five Mark Award nominated composers. We’ll discuss techniques to spark creativity and create music that works great with a wide diversity of visual material.

All too often, we get briefs and license requests and our music gets used but we don't understand the process that happens AFTER our music gets selected and licensed. This panel is focused on what happens after you win the license. How the music is edited, how the stems can be useful, how it is mixed by re-recording mixers into the final audio for the spot, etc. By understanding what happens to our music as it is worked into the final spot, we can better prepare the audio and metadata for our clients, and help ensure what we deliver is as easy to use as possible.

Neighbouring Rights royalties is one of the fastest growing revenue streams in the music industry and for many years production music has been left out of this stream. How can libraries and composers/performers get a piece of this pie?

Blake Neely and his writing team will break down the process to composing for the Arrow-verse (Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow) that include working collaboratively, creating unique sound palates and interacting with show runners.

A presentation on the process of quickly writing 20, 30 or even more cues in 1 session. This panel will feature a live Pro-Tools rig, tips, tricks and methods for staying creatively fresh, composing in broad strokes and not sounding samey.

Three brave production music directors from top Hollywood libraries. Two extraordinary music supervisors. And one hour to find the perfect set of tracks for the supes, all in front of a live audience! In this exciting sequel to the event held at PMC2018, Megatrax’s Belinda Robles will defend her title against two new challengers! This panel will give insights into the processes central to the placement of production music: responding to briefs for music, and selecting the right musical choices for clients.

A digital platform or global broadcaster asks you for a worldwide license. Can you grant it? For which rights and under what conditions? Join three of the industry’s most informed experts as we navigate this multi-dimensional minefield.

Understand better how global licensing works and what composers and publishers need to know before they do – or don’t – enter into deals. Sync, performance, mechanical, streaming, digital, neighboring rights and more are all part of this definitely complicated, sometimes confusing, but increasingly important topic.

Gain insight about the changing value of different rights as well as the possible impact of global licensing on various rights and royalty models.

We'll also examine how we might want the licensing landscape to look and what we can we do collectively to help achieve it.

SPONSORED BY:

With more audio content being created than ever before, broadcasters have access to a vast universe of musical content to bring their audiovisual works to life. From the moment music is created in the studio to the moment it’s licensed for usage on TVs, for foreground or background, an ad, a jingle or a theme song, it must be properly registered in order to be tracked. We will cover areas such as cue-sheet generation, rights clearance, documentation, sales reports, usage reporting and the flow of royalty payments.

A shocking 3% of all media composers are women. Production music has the potential to help shift gender ratios meaningfully and systemically. Breaking the Sound Barrier will focus on identifying constraints and addressing solutions for underrepresented groups in the industry. We will hear from researchers, experts, end-users, and organizers in the industry who have looked at the problems, identified solutions, and deeply understand why inclusion is good for everyone.

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This exciting panel will explore the current state of production music in Latin America. Which countries offer the most growth potential? What are the risks and challenges of doing business in these markets? What are the differences between PROs in each territory? What can be done to protect our copyrights and combat piracy? These are just some of the questions that we will explore with the help of a dynamic roster of production music executives and publishers representing a cross section of the Latin American market.

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Helping Composers make the right decisions on work that best fits their needs, debating and explaining the various deals out there and the pros and cons of each.

This is a very worthwhile conversation for us to have as an open and transparent discussion about all the different ways in which publishers and companies are engaging with composers in the ever-changing landscape of work-for-hire jobs and the quest for copyright ownership of tracks. We will put together a panel of folks who are willing and able to open up and speak their truth without fear of judgment or “bashing.”

We will chat with the impressive folks sitting with us about their own experiences in this space, either as an artist/composer or a publisher, as they navigate through the many different forms the deals can take in this current market. They represent a good cross-section of functions inside the way music is curated, produced, placed and ultimately, owned, and what those different scenarios mean in terms of all forms of income earned by the music.

Find out everything you need to know about how production music is used and composed for various types of usages in the world of sports content. An esteemed panel will be represented from the library, composer and end user sides.

Composing music for an interactive medium like video games usually requires a different approach than scoring linear forms of media such as film, television and advertising. Hear from some of the industry’s leading composers on their different creative and production techniques, the various technical challenges scoring games and their individual experiences collaborating with games studios on blockbuster franchises and indie titles alike. Featuring examples of their work from Anthem, Assassin’s Creed, Borderlands, Call of Duty, Days Gone, Fallout, Mass Effect, The Elder Scrolls.